Ziaeddin Torabi is an Iranian-American poet. He was
born in 1944 in Zanjan, Iran and immigrated to U.S.A. in 2011.
He started composing and reciting poems in childhood and
earned a B.A. in English language and literature from
Isfahan University and an M.A. in linguistics from Tehran
University. Torabi has published more than 30 books,
including poetry, criticisim and translation. He has won many
literary awards, including the 2010 Iran Annual book Prize for
his poetry collection, Face To Face With Dream, that has been
translated into English by Parisa Samady and was published
by Ad Luman press of American River College in 2012.
Lost
It was just noon
when I woke up
the sun was standing
in the sky, as always
watching me.
Lost in my dreams
last night
there in the desert
far from home
my homeland.
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Paco Márquez is author of the chapbook Portraits in G Minor
(Folded Word Press, 2017). His work has appeared in Apogee,
Ostrich Review, Live Mag!, Huizache, Occupoetry, and Late
Peaches: Poems by Sacramento Poets. One of his poems went up
on a public mural through Sacramento’s Del Paso Words &
Walls Project. He was featured on Columbia University’s
WKCR 89.9 FM’s “Studio A,” and in “I Know No Country,” a
short film directed by Antonio Salume which won NYU’s
Spring 2016 Sight & Sound Documentary Film Festival.
Recipient of fellowships from New York University, The Center
for Book Arts, and the Squaw Valley Writer’s Workshop, he
holds and MFA in poetry from NYU, where he was poetry editor
of Washington Square. Paco is a member of Los Escritores del
Nuevo Sol and for several years he was a board member of the
Sacramento Poetry Center. He lives in New York City with his
partner of 12 years.
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Kate Asche’s poetry is forthcoming in Canary and has appeared in Santa
Clara Review, The Pinch, The Missouri Review (as an Audio Prize
finalist) and in Colorado Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Our Day in
the Labyrinth, debuted in 2015 from Finishing Line Press. Ms. Asche
invests time in building literary community/ies. A graduate of the UC Davis
Creative Writing program, she teaches workshops in Sacramento and is the
faculty coordinator for the Sacramento Poetry Center Spring Conference. She
co-edited the Sacramento Poetry Center’s journal, Tule Review, was
associate editor for Under the Gum Tree and read for Memoir Journal.
From 2005 to 2011, she coordinated The Tomales Bay Workshops under the
direction of Pam Houston. She helped to establish the award-winning I
Street Press at Sacramento Public Library and hosts a literary events blog
at www.kateasche.com/
by Kate Asche
Originally published in The Pinch 37.2
A STUDY OF PREPOSITIONS
Rain translates remoteness to hush
by disrupting the volume of the air.
Rain translates nearness to time
by disrupting volatile bodies—
aromas of wild cucumber and fennel,
coyote mint—
as it falls both louder and quieter
where I pass under an oracle oak.
I want to say after the drought,
but I stop myself.
What if after isn’t?
